Decision Making

What are your priorities? Are you living them? There’s a group called NotMyPriorities.org that hands out postcards depicting a pie chart of the United States’ budget. The Pentagon’s slice is well over half the pie, with each of the other categories (education, health, environment, justice, housing, etc.) occupying just a tiny wedge. My older daughter picked up this postcard from a sidewalk protester and asked us about the chart. Next thing you know my husband had us all (including our preschooler) drawing our own pies and dividing them up as we saw fit. “Imagine...

Have you ever been stuck at a decision point, paralyzed by inner conflict, pulled in multiple directions by different needs, desires, and fears? Instead of trying to choose among these warring factions of yourself, perhaps it is time to get them to work together. Cast them as your internal Board of Directors, give each a seat at the table, and work out a deal so that you can move forward. Here’s one way to do it:* Step 1: Identify the topic or decision in neutral terms. Imagine (or draw) a boardroom table with the topic in the middle. Step 2: Identify between four and six internal...

I have a client who is completely fed up with her job. She is spread too thin, underpaid, under-resourced, isolated, and dissatisfied. She has tried hard to make the job work better, but it has now become clear that the fundamental problems with this job are not going to change. She sees that it will never provide what she wants and needs from her job: financial reward, respect, teamwork, meaning, and balance. If this job were a boyfriend, her friends would all be urging her to dump him and find someone more worthy. And yet she is finding it difficult to leave – in part because she feels...

I know I’m late to the party, but I just finished reading Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, a provocative and fun to read economic analysis of many social phenomena that turned many of my assumptions on their heads. I like that. But it also sheds new light on something that I encounter often in coaching – fear of change. In their chapter on parenting, Levitt and Dubner discuss risk and demonstrate how wrong our calculations of risk frequently are. For example, many more children die from drowning in a swimming pool than by gunshot even though there relatively fewer...

Do you sometimes feel like all aptitude and no direction? That was me for a long time. I had confidence in my capacity to do something, but could never figure out what that something was. I was surrounded by people who were driven to pursue one path or another – family members and friends and boyfriends who were passionately pursuing a dream while I slogged along in corporate law – and it felt to me like I was just missing that passion gene. Instead, I felt stuck. I would have given anything to know what I should do. Does this sound like you? Are you capable, maybe even ambitious, but...